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Lithium was $61/kg 2 years ago and now it's $14/kg. It is neither rare nor expensive.
by jeffbee 2y ago
Lithium was $61/kg 2 years ago and now it's $14/kg. It is neither rare nor expensive.
- pfdietz 2y agoYou're giving the price of lithium carbonate, not lithium. Li is only 18.7% of LiCO3.
- jeffbee 2y agoI am giving a direct comparison between the same commodity at two points in time. Whatever people thought was true about the preciousness of lithium between 2021-2023 when the price rose 8x obviously needs reconsideration in 2025 after the price went right back down to where it had been. https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/ILAM25/overview https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/ILAM25/overview
- don_esteban 2y agoLithium is not super precious, but its price is still a non-trivial multiply of aluminium's price. Your graphs show it. They also show that there has not been a substantial reduction in its price over the years. This means there is market potential for other (al/sodium) chemistries, mainly for grid-level storage.
- jeffbee 2y agoIf we're just racing to the cheapest available reactants, iron flow batteries are going to win that race. And, unlike these others, there are already iron flow batteries on the grid.
- burnerthrow008 2y agoThis seems to ignore the entire supply/demand context of both metals. Demand for Al is basically flat, and the supply/demand relationship has reached an equilibrium. Electric cars (by far the biggest consumer of lithium) have been experiencing a an average compounded growth of something like 50% per year for the past 10 years. Li production is still catching up. The earth has plenty of Li deposits but there is a lead time to purchase the heavy machines needed to turn those deposits into productive mines. Once electric car growth hits the inflection point on the adoption curve, and growth becomes sub-exponential, we'll start to see major downward pressure on Li prices.
- pfdietz 2y agoYou made a statement (that it is neither rare nor expensive) that is about the absolute price of the commodity, not its price relative to another point in time. Lithium is not expensive compared to, say, gold, but it is expensive compared to, say, copper, never mind aluminum or iron.
- ajross 2y agoSpot price for Al is $2.50 as I type this. Lithium is rare and expensive in context, yeah.